There's a great deal of intense fear
among many in the public about the possible health impact of cell
phone towers and high power radio waves. While there is
actually some legitimate research into health impacts ongoing, most
current research indicates current current communications
technologies have relatively minimal (if any) affects on the human
body, compared to more serious direct threats -- such as the
ingestion
of plastic residues. Nonetheless, there's been great public
fear perpetrated by a variety of pseudo-medical sources decrying the
health
risks of radio waves.

This irrational behavior was brought
into sharp focus by the residents of Craigavon, South Africa.
On August 12, 2009, a new iBurst (or HC-SDMA, High Capacity Spatial
Division Multiple Access) tower in the city's Fourways Memorial
Park. IBurst is a high speed wireless broadband technology,
commonly used in the U.S., Canada, South Africa, and elsewhere to
bring fast wireless internet to USB modems.

Shortly after the
tower was turned on, residents began to complain that they were
suddenly afflicted with severe health issues according
to MyBroadband. Describes Tracey-Lee Dorny, one of
the supposed victims, "Several rash cases were presented in
person and by photos from people who could not attend [a meeting with
iBurst]. Headaches, nausea, tinnitus, dry burning itchy skins,
gastric imbalances and totally disrupted sleep patterns, especially
with some of the children, were some of the issues presented by the
residents."

Residents recruited the legal services of
legal firm Bezuidenhout, Van Zyl and Associates to sue iBurst.
They complained that their symptoms resided within a day of leaving
the town, and they demanded the tower be permanently removed.

Then
iBurst did something clever. It secretly turned off the tower
near the end of September. The residents didn't know this,
though, when they came to a meeting with iBurst CEO Jannie van Zyl in
mid-November. They claimed that their symptoms took hours to
subside, but would return shortly after they came back to the town.
They said that certain skin conditions took a while longer -- as long
as 6 weeks -- to fully recover. They also said that their
afflictions still were ongoing.

Then Mr. Zyl revealed to them
that they had been tricked. He explains, "At the meeting
in mid-November residents claimed that full recovery of skin
conditions could take as long as 6 weeks. Yet, the tower was switched
off for more than 6 weeks by this time. At this point it became
apparent that the tower can, in no way, be the cause of the symptoms,
as it was already switched off for many weeks, yet the residents
still saw symptoms that come and go according to their proximity to
the area."

At this point it seems almost certain that the
symptoms are indicative of some other local heath risk, such as
contaminated drinking water. However, the tower is obviously
not to blame. Mr. Zyl lauds the safety of iBurst, adding, "Radiation levels
emitted by the tower were ten thousand times LESS than the
international safety standards set for mobile towers and that the
radiation at this site was in fact the same level as that already
present from cellular phone towers in the area."

Despite
being caught in a fallacy, the residents' hatred of the
broadband service burns on. Their lawyer states that the
medical complaints were "only the beginning" of a much
larger complaint against iBurst.

The truly curious part is that in their fervor to
destroy the local iBurst tower, the residents seem to have given up
on any effort to find the true reason why they are suffering from
strange health afflictions. Log this one in the annals of
irrational fear of radio waves.

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I wonder if they are just so afraid of the tower that their fear is causing these "symptoms" to appear. What scares me is that when people like this in seattle I think it was, were against radio towers there they bombed them. I hope they have security guards posted near the tower.

All such nonsense is either psychosomatic, if it becomes extant at all, or an outright lie. Those are the only 2 options.

You get the same thing in anti-vax talk, acupuncture, aromatherapy, homeopathy, etc. You could do pretty well by characterizing all such non-scientific assertions as being propagated either by lies or psychosomatic effects.

Drug companies play into this effect well. I have heard of studies, but don't actually have a link so someone needs to verify that I am correct, that show that people get better after taking a placebo drug because they think they need a pill. Consumer Reports (I think it was CR) said that drug companies invented restless leg syndrome just to sell a drug. Suddenly people were saying, "You know what, my legs do move a lot!" Drug companies have made us believe that we need drugs. We are bombarded with ads making us think the new more expensive drug is better than the old tested generic. Or we need a drug to live a normal life. Or we need a drug for a problem we didn't know we had.

I know a person who is psychosomatic when it comes to drugs. It is very sad really. And it also shows the subtle power mind can do.

Every drug test includes a placebo blind control group, so your point isn't really valid. Yes, placebos do make people feel better sometimes. But no drug can be sold (in the US at least) unless it works **better** than a placebo.

Honestly, your entire point of view sounds like the usual hollywood-inspired anti-corporate paranoia. Drug companies are in business to sell drugs. Does a company somewhere occasionally overpromote their product? I'm sure....but they still save tens of millions of lives each year.

How many lives have YOU saved, sitting on your butt complaining about evil corporations?

I am not anti-corporation. What I don't like is money put ahead of my health. And I don't like being made to think I have a medical problem. Obviously drug companies need to make a profit so as to have a motivation to do more research. That is not the issue. The issue is drug companies making people think they need drugs.

I was not referring to real problems. I was referring to people who think they have a problem when, in fact, they do not. As in the case of this radio tower.

They didn't say all conditions were, RLS is real, they were talking about symptoms the mind creates based off fear of something happening. Like what these people were saying the tower was doing to them, even though it was off.

"Every drug test includes a placebo blind control group, so your point isn't really valid. Yes, placebos do make people feel better sometimes. But no drug can be sold (in the US at least) unless it works **better** than a placebo.

Honestly, your entire point of view sounds like the usual hollywood-inspired anti-corporate paranoia. Drug companies are in business to sell drugs. Does a company somewhere occasionally overpromote their product? I'm sure....but they still save tens of millions of lives each year.

How many lives have YOU saved, sitting on your butt complaining about evil corporations?"

You poor, pathetic brain-washed Yank-wanker...

I am SURE that you know how many double-blind studies were done, to the FDA's satisfaction prior to the release of the H1N1 vaccine, right? And I am SURE that you are aware of all of its side effects, right? And that is just one drug... How about paracetimal? How many tablets does it take over how many days to kill your liver? And how effective is it over common aspirin? I could go on, but I think I have proved my point.

Said point, however, has nothing to do with this article. In the context of this article, it would 'seem' that the local populace is being a wee bit melodramatic. But let's not forget that (due to lack of effective regulation) many drug companies, mobile companies et al have used SA as a testing playground for years. Were I the local populace, I'd be a wee bit wary as well.

"how many double-blind studies were done, to the FDA's satisfaction prior to the release of the H1N1 vaccine, right? And that is just one drug... "

First of all, get your terminology straight. A vaccine isn't a drug. We don't spend years double-blind testing flue vaccines before release because a) if you don't produce a new vaccine every year, its rather pointless, as the virii mutate that fast, and b) we already have more than a century of experience making flu vaccines. In any case, we do double blind test flu vaccines...but we do at AS as they're being admininistered, as a retrograde efficacy check.

Finally, what the hell point do you think you're making? That flu shots don't save lives? If so, you're sadly mistaken.

"How about paracetimal? How many tablets does it take over how many days to kill your liver"

Well, given I've taken it daily for the last 11 years (in conjuunction with another painkiller) for a chronic pain condition, I honestly don't consider it to be terribly dangerous. Of course, if you take too much, you'll die...but that's true of pretty much everything in this world, including Vitamin A and even water. So what?

"I could go on, but I think I have proved my point."

If your point was to prove you're a Luddite twit, then yes, you've succeeded.

You have to be kidding. Chernobyl used a reactor design that has been implemented almost nowhere else in the world for stationary applications. The closest parallel is in older nuke subs where size and weight was a severe limiting factor. The US determined that it was unsuitable for civilian applications decades before the Chernobyl failure. What happened says more about the nature of the USSR than it does about the risks of nuclear power.

Of course, reactors built on Chernobyl's princicples were never even considered in the US, they were too dangerous. But also lets not forget that had the Soviets just evacuated people when the accident happened, they would have avoided nearly all the health problems. I read there were people still fishing in Chernobyl's cooling pond several days after the melt down occurred, because the USSR didn't want to advertise how bad the accident was.

Rofl, how many people were killed by TMI? Zero. How many people were even injured or had their health impaired in any way? Zero again. You get more radiation from a cross-country air flight than anyone got from the TMI "incident".

As for the "no nuke plant is safe from earthquakes and other natural disasters", did you forget about that Japanese nuclear plant that was right on top of a large earthquake last year? It didn't even come close to causing a leak. Plants are generally rated to withstand a Richter 9 earthquake. That's ONE HUNDRED TIMES stronger than the one that destroyed Haiti.

Meanwhile we have possibly as many as 10,000 people a year die from all the health problems caused by coal-fired power plants, while asshats like you do your best to keep them open with your irational fear of nuclear power.

For the time period 1969-1996 (which includes Chernobyl), nuclear power had the fewest number of fatalities per GWh generated (p.241, fig 7.2.7). Even if you include estimates for latent cancer deaths, nuclear is still the safest (fig 7.2.9).

So, the worst nuclear disaster ever to hit man kind killed 56 people?How many people die, each day, from illnesses that link directly or indirectly to using coal to produce electricity? 100-fold? 1000-fold?How many cancer cases are reported each year that may or may not result from coal ash being inhaled?

Erm, no one living below a power line ever got sick from the PCBs in a transformer. The risk factor from them is very low...there was a case once where over a million gallons of PCB were accidentally dumped in a river, and no illnesses were reported as a result.

A heavy dose will cause a skin rash...long term exposure will increase your risk of cancer somewhat. But getting sick just from being near a container of PCB? Thats quackery, my friend. Chlorine is a much stronger carcinogen...and you keep that under your kitchen sink.

Well there you go, you were totally wrong. It was in Everett, not Seattle. </sarcasm>

Having lived most of my life in the area, I can tell you that environmental terrorism is a force to be reckoned with in Western Washington. We had a spate of fires in McMansion developments a year or so ago, too. I can't remember if that was ELF or another ecoterrorist group, though. But hey, we've got issues with ultra-right-wing terrorists, too, though. We're all a bit nutty - maybe it's the rain.

The current medical viewpoint is indeed that it's a nocebo effect.Double blind studies of people with what's called idiopathic environmental intolerance has revealed those people can't reliably distinguish if they're being subjected to the electromagnetic radiation or not.

Exactly. Trust Mick to get it totally wrong, when he says "at this point it seems almost certain that the symptoms are indicative of some other local heath risk".

In the minds of a true environmentalist, if someone is complaining about headaches or stomache pain anywhere in the world, its just gotta be due to a chemical leak, radioactive waste, or power line of some sort.

On the other hand, their symptoms match zinc toxicity to the t too. It could be they have heavy metals leeching into their water, or have cruddy pipes, and are only now paying special attention since there's a tower to blame instead of "I guess this is life".

Hi, I'm from South Africa. Yes, we have Internet here. However our only fixed-line provider only offers speeds up to 4Mbps - which you pay through the ass for - and its service levels are practically non-existent. (Yay for government-owned monopolies, huh?) Hence many choose (or rather, are forced out of necessity) to use wireless Internet providers such as iBurst.

BTW, the residents of Craigavon have a reputation for stupidity and/or inbreeding (much like American rednecks), which explains their "symptoms" more thoroughly than any doctor could.

It is possible that there fear is causing their illness. If I remember correctly the illness associated with radio waves and power lines takes years to develop and in general it is manifested as an internal illness i.e. cancer.

The symptoms they describe make me think that they think the effects are more like someone pointing the magnetron from a microwave at them.

Either they have another health issue or they started stressing themselves and possibly scratching themselves, a common stress reaction.